CILIP | Working in a Further / Higher Education College: Learning Resources Advisor

Guide to Working in Health Information Case Studies:

Working in a Further / Higher Education College:
Learning Resources Advisor

by Tracey Hunter

Organisation:
I've found that working within a FE/HE college is a challenging and varied role where the primary aim is to support staff and students in their teaching and studying.

In my college 80% of students are on further education courses and require a different level and kind of support from those on HE courses. It is essential that we develop a good understanding of the curriculum so that we can provide the resources required by all students for their assignments.

In my college, there are 5 learning resources advisers who manage the library resources for their subject areas. I provide support and resources for courses in physical and occupational therapy; health & social care; childcare & education, pre-foundation studies and beauty therapy & hairdressing.

Main Duties:

• Managing stock in my subject areas e.g. ordering items; classification and cataloguing of new stock and editing stock to ensure currency of information.

• Liaising with teaching staff to ensure library stock reflects course content, checking reading lists for modules (and ordering items where necessary) and keeping staff / students up to date with new developments in the library and getting feedback on services by attending course committee meetings.

• Maintaining Intranet pages for subject resources with links to journals; training materials; databases, useful websites and resources for modules.

• Helping to provide a general enquiry service to students during all opening hours, where you could be asked about any subject or computer programme.

• Providing tours and inductions for new staff and students plus training sessions on searching the Internet, using databases and referencing skills.

• Producing help sheets for specialist resources in our subject areas and resource lists for the students on a particular module

• Producing current awareness bulletins for staff and posters to market our services

• We are also part of service improvement groups specialising in marketing, developing workshops or staffing issues.

Tracey Hunter

Learning Resources Adviser – Health & Social Studies
Colchester Institute Library tracey.hunter@colchester.ac.uk

Updated: 24 October 2005

Health Libraries

Guide to Working in Health Information Case Studies:

Working in a Further / Higher Education College: Learning Resources Advisor

Working in a Further / Higher Education College:
Learning Resources Advisor